Ocean “acidification” is a somewhat unique branch of the overarching climate scare. It differs from other branches of the big scare in that it does not depend on atmospheric heating as the driver of the supposed scary consequences. Instead, with ocean “acidification,” the idea is that increased CO2 in the atmosphere (from the burning of fossil fuels) leads to increased CO2 dissolved in the oceans, which leads to lower pH of ocean water, which then becomes the driver of the alleged scary consequences. Thus, ocean “acidification” can theoretically work as a scare even if the atmosphere fails to heat with increasing CO2 content to the extent predicted by advocates’ climate models.
But the ocean “acidification” claim has its own frailties. For advocates of apocalyse, it is a problem that the ocean is (somewhat) alkaline, rather than acidic, and that the change in ocean pH from even large increases in CO2 in the atmosphere is small. Some might even call the change in ocean pH “slight.” And the pH change, even in worst-case scenarios, is not nearly enough to bring it down to the level of neutrality, let alone acidity. The last point is the reason that I have been putting the term “acidification” in quotes.
So, how can advocates make ocean “acidification” into something sufficiently scary to motivate lots of people to hate or fear fossil fuels? Well, perhaps they could manufacture a claim that somewhat lower pH would kill all the tropical fish. OK, but the claim could not be that slightly lower pH will directly kill the fish — nobody would ever buy that. There would have to be a different mechanism.
Several years ago (May 2021) I had a post covering the work of a pair of researchers in Australia who had come up with a claim fitting just this description. The researchers in question were Philip Munday and Danielle Dixson of James Cook University in Queensland. Over the course of multiple years and some 22 peer-reviewed papers, those two (and co-authors) had put forth a claim that lower ocean pH would drive tropical fish crazy, or at least cause the fish to experience “profound behavioral and sensory impairments” that would imperil their survival. As should be obvious, this claim gave extraordinary support to the anti-fossil fuel narrative, independent of any claim of global warming, and as a result gave the papers a very high profile, and brought the authors great acclaim.
But it was too good to be true. The occasion for my May 2021 post was a paper that had appeared in Nature in 2020, by authors Timothy Clark, et al., reporting on the results of efforts to reproduce the Munday/Dixson results. Excerpt from the abstract:
Here, we comprehensively and transparently show that—in contrast to previous studies—end-of-century ocean acidification levels have negligible effects on important behaviours of coral reef fishes, such as the avoidance of chemical cues from predators, fish activity levels and behavioural lateralization (left–right turning preference). Using data simulations, we additionally show that the large effect sizes and small within-group variances that have been reported in several previous studies are highly improbable. Together, our findings indicate that the reported effects of ocean acidification on the behaviour of coral reef fishes are not reproducible, suggesting that behavioural perturbations will not be a major consequence for coral reef fishes in high CO2 oceans.
The abstract does not contain the word “fraud,” but the article contains strong suggestions of data manipulation. This was a very unusual piece for Nature to publish, given the harm it caused to a significant underpinning of the anti-fossil fuel narrative.
Here we are now, five years on. Does anything remain of the “ocean acidification” narrative as a reason to hate fossil fuels?
The past few months have seen pieces laying out the cases both for and against believing that “ocean acidification” is a significant environmental concern. On the side of “ocean acidification is really bad and scary,” I will highlight a piece by Dana Nuccitelli that appeared in something called The Invading Sea in March, title “Fossil fuel pollution’s effect on oceans comes with huge costs.” On the side of “ocean acidification is way overblown,” I will highlight a May 13, 2026 paper by van Wijngaarden, Ridd, Cornell and Happer, title “Acidification of Water by CO2.”
Nuccitelli is a frequent writer at Yale Climate Connections (yet another black eye for Yale). In Nuccitelli’s piece, he appears to have given up on trying to claim that changing pH is killing off the tropical fish. So instead, here, he emphasizes the effect on coral. He claims that “acidification” is killing off coral, but can’t attribute dying coral just to pH, so he throws in warming as well:
Florida’s barrier reef is in trouble – and it’s costing us. The reef has been experiencing a severe outbreak of stony coral tissue loss disease over the past decade. The likely cause: stress from the warming climate and acidifying waters, both the result of burning fossil fuels. . . . Human burning of fossil fuels affects Earth’s oceans via the one-two punch of warming and acidifying waters, which occurs as carbon dioxide is absorbed into the ocean.
No quantitative information is provided for the amount of coral loss, if any. The “likely cause” of the disease is said to be a combination of “warming” and “acidifying waters.” How does he know that? How much from each? Is there any actual proof? If so, Nuccitelli does not choose to cite it. I guess it’s just obvious to his readership.
After asserting the “likely cause,” Nuccitelli moves on to calculating the cost, not of the portion of the coral that may be lost, but of the entire tourism industry related to all the coral:
The financial stake of losing the reef is high. Florida’s coral reefs are estimated to draw in over $1 billion in tourism revenue each year, provide $650 million in flood protection benefits and support over 70,000 jobs. What’s more, coral reefs protect people and property by dissipating up to 97% of wave energy, lessening storm surges.
And then Nuccitelli goes on to rely on a recent paper from Nature Climate Change (from January 2026) that purports to calculate a new measure of “social cost of carbon” on an assumption that global warming will significantly decrease the productivity of the oceans, not just for coral, but all other life. The NCC paper does not appear to deal with the acidification issue at all.
Here’s my favorite chart from Nuccitelli’s article on the subject of “acidification”:
It looks like the ocean pH is dropping like a stone! Do you notice anything odd? The entire vertical scale of the chart goes from pH of 8.03 to 8.11 — less than 0.1 of a pH unit. The full pH scale goes from 0 to 14. If you plotted this line with a vertical scale going all the way from 0 to 14, the line would be indistinguishable from horizontal.
If you are interested in the question of whether ocean corals are increasing or decreasing around the world, I can recommend several pieces to you from Peter Ridd. Ridd is a guy who actually goes out and studies the corals (he was formerly at James Cook University, like Munday and Dixson, until he got thrown out for heresy). He is also the same Ridd who is a co-author on the van Wijngaarden, et al., paper further discussed below. Here is a piece Ridd wrote in 2023 for the Global Warming Policy Foundation called “Coral in a Warming World, Causes for Optimism”; and here is one from August 2025 from the Institute of Public Affairs, title “Science group think flounders on state of Great Barrier Reef.” The bottom line is that there is plenty of evidence that coral reefs worldwide are thriving (not every one, and not every year, but on an aggregate basis), and no evidence at all of aggregate decline. In light of that evidence, what is the proof that “acidification” is harming corals? The answer is, zero.
In contrast to Nuccitelli’s evidence-free advocacy piece, the van Wijngaarden, et al., paper is a serious piece of scientific work. I note that it appears on the website of the CO2 Coalition, rather than in one of the “prestige” scientific journals. I infer that these authors, who actually are the best scientists to address this topic, have given up on the enforced groupthink of these “prestige” magazines.
The paper is long (55 pages), and much of it is technical. But the bottom line is that it is preposterous to believe that the slight decline in ocean pH caused by increased atmospheric CO2 can cause any significant problem for ocean life. In this blog post, I will only provide a summary quote. From the Abstract:
Fundamental inorganic chemistry shows that increasing concentrations of atmospheric CO2 will have no harmful effect on organisms that live in the natural waters of the Earth [1], and may well benefit them. Alkalinity and dissolved CO2 give high buffering capacity to most natural waters and minimize the change of pH from external influences. For example, doubling the atmospheric concentration of CO2 from 430 ppm to 860 ppm would reduce the pH of representative sea water at a temperature of 25 C from pH = 8.18 to pH = 7.93. This change is comparable to diurnal pH changes in biologically productive surface waters, due to photosynthetic fixation of dissolved inorganic carbon during the day and respiration at night. The change is also less than the variations of pH with latitude, longitude and depth in the oceans.
A key point is that the pH of the ocean is not a fixed number for the whole world at a given point in time. Rather, pH varies within small ranges based on latitude, longitude, depth, and even time of day. The result is that ocean life already has to deal with these ranges.
A big part of the paper deals with the chemistry of how much the pH of the ocean might be affected by increase in atmospheric level of CO2 from the current 430 ppm up to even a doubling of same to 860 pm. Some mathematics is involved, but I think it is basic and well-known chemistry. The conclusion, as stated in the abstract, is that the average pH could go down all the way to 7.93 — still well into the alkaline range (neutral is 7, alkaline above 7, and acid below 7).
If anyone is aware of research establishing that pH variation in the ranges indicated are some kind of grave threat to ocean life, I would be eager to be made aware of it. Until I see that, my conclusion is that the whole “ocean acidification” thing is no more than an effort to play on the idea that people will find the word “acid” scary.
The oceans already have 99% of available free CO2 of the planet in it thus the change is small.
There is no change. it is either an artifact of modelling or dodgy measuring.
Missing from this discussion is that the average PH of the oceans that all life evolved from is 7.8. That is significantly less alkaline than the current 8.1. “Acidification” is a propaganda slogan that should be exposed as a psyops manipulation. Anyone with basic knowledge knows you have to get below a PH of 7 to become acidic.
Interesting – as there are claims that back then co2 concentrations were up to 15* higher( too lazy to look it up).
Therefore the oceanic co2 levels should have been 15* higher(in Climate Science there is no saturation effect, therefore let’s scale it the ignorant way).
The Oceans must have been an acidic pit or the impact is significantly lower than they claim.
Then there are these crazy claims that DNA is an Acid, as the A suggests.
Now I wonder how bad more acidic Oceans may be for the reproduction of nucleic acids?
And if we go one step back, to the very beginning:
Premordial bacteria that fed on hydrogen and co2, turning them into? Acetic Acid.
And atmospheric co2 levels are said to have been at least 200* higher 1.5 billions years ago..
poor,poor Oceans.
A story of pure Acid it seems.
Good points, gyan.
I am also not sure how “average pH” is being defined. If one simply adds the pHs and takes an average, then give pH spans near 8.0 are given the same weight as those near 7.0, even though the [H+] is 10 times as much. The only way to get an accurate average is to use the antilog of the pH, add them together, and then take the log of that number. Some may be surprised at the results.
One more thought: If life survived those periods where atmospheric CO2 was in the thousands of PPMs, how come it is being projected to have such dire impacts at <500 PPM? Curious minds want to know.
“One more thought: If life survived those periods where atmospheric CO2 was in the thousands of PPMs, how come it is being projected to have such dire impacts at <500 PPM? Curious minds want to know.”
Indoctrinated minds don’t want to know. All I get is crickets when I point out that the Holocene thermal Optimum was an average of 2C warmer than today for 4,000 years and gave rise to human civilizations world wide invalidates the claim that exceeding 1.5C from the coldest period in the last 10,000 years will be a disaster.
The.very idea of an “average” pH of ocean water is nonsensical, as is the publication of pH readings to 2 decimal places.
“ “Acidification” is a propaganda slogan that should be exposed as a psyops manipulation.”
That’s why they never say the oceans are becoming “less caustic”. Doesn’t sound as scary.
It might be worthwhile mentioning that the ocean holds about 45-times the amount of atmospheric carbon is a buffer solution (so a change of ions will not necessarily change the pH) and in an equilibrium with the ocean floors.
There is a measured pH decrease at the ocean surface, but that sounds a lot less alarming
Google says:
Fossil Fuels & Industry produced approximately \(1,773\) PtC of \(CO_{2}\)in the last 200 years
Uhm . . Oceanic acidification assuming carbon and its acid are the only driver and all 1773PtC make it into the ocean..
Google says:
At pH 8, a 5% change in negative ions (hydroxide ions, \(OH^{-}\)) shifts the hydroxide concentration by exactly 5%. Because the \(pOH\) is logarithmic, this minuscule change in ion concentration alters the solution’s pH by less than \(\pm 0.01\) pH units.
I wonder if anyone has studied how much effect our fluoridated water affect the oceans.
In considering the highly buffered nature of the sea, man places millions of tonnes of Sulphur Dioxide SO2 into the atmosphere where it combines with water H2O to produce Sulphuric Acid (Battery Acid) H2SO4 or “acid rain” (remember that one ?) – and we continue to do so.
SO2 pollution production peaked at about 55MT in 1978 and is now down to about 30MT and falling as nations wisely keep on reducing this pollutant (that’s why “green” diesel is advertised as being low Sulphur 50ppm, 20ppm or even 2ppm – the refineries have to extract it and coal fired power stations have to use scrubbers to remove it etc. etc.).
My point is that Sulphuric acid is billions of times more potent than weak carbonic acid and it all ultimately falls into or drains into the sea.
pH is a measure of positive Hydrogen ions and is actually not a good indicator of the overall “strength” of an acid or alkali – “strength” is generally considered via its Ka rating (dissociation constant).
Ka equivalent rating: Sulphuric Acid H2SO4 is 1.0 x 10^3 which is 2.27 Billion times stronger than Carbonic Acid CO32- is 4.4 x 10^-7 (which is quite pleasant to drink – soda water – common to all fizzy drinks – is as “bad” as it gets).
So H2SO4 acid rain represents a threat 2.2 BILLION times worse than man’s CO2 production and the seas soak it up without so much as a blip in its pH.
Now I ask you how significant CO2 savings can possibly be when our average annual reduction in H2SO4 exceeds the effect of all the CO2 man has ever placed in the atmosphere (inasmuch as the effect it has on “ocean acidification”) since man discovered fire.
The concept that the seas, which are buffered by Quintillions of Tonnes of Calcium / Calcium Carbonate / aragonite, could ever become acidic is so far fetched as to be considered scientifically delusional.
scientifically delusional is an apt description for the entire climate-political-industrial complex.
Please use CO2, not carbon.
Please avoid “Fossil Fuels.”
You are indirectly giving unearned credibility to those corrupting Science.
I sometimes feel a bit sad for these people whose career work consists of little else than torturing some vague, unobservable measurements of imagined goings-on in secluded places of this vast planet, so that they can be patted on the head by their “betters” who might publish their scribblings on subjects that every sane person will just flick the pages of.
I mean, how many of them one day just up and say –
“I never wanted to do this in the first place.
I always wanted to be . . .”
Watch out for the bad acid, man.
Yeah, it’s going around.
A Lumberjack!
Perhaps, whittling hockey sticks from fallen bristle cone pines during those quiet moments of winter…..
When I first encountered (about 15 years ago) this idea I spent a few hours reading and put it to bed. It keeps waking up. It is getting tiresome.
It is getting tiresome.
Remember: Coral reefs can survive nuclear explosions, so a little CO2 is not going to kill them off, especially since there was much more CO2 in the air in the past and corals are still alive and thriving.
This whole “acidification” thing is a joke. A bad joke.
I have tried arguing about OA with environmentalists, and I have cocluded that they simply lack the mental acuity to grasp concepts such as pH, concentration, buffering etc.
NuttyCello was also a denizen at the inaptly named Skeptical Science, if I recall correctly. That’s really all you need to know.
“And the pH change, even in worst-case scenarios, is not nearly enough to bring it down to the level of neutrality, let alone acidity.”
“The entire vertical scale of the chart goes from pH of 8.03 to 8.11 — less than 0.1 of a pH unit.”
I know he’s only a lawyer, but this is really ignorant stuff. All the metabolic processes of advanced organisms take place in aa pH buffered environment. That means that if you add acid, the H₃O⁺ will react with something, so small change in pH. But that doesn’t mean nothing happened.
In both the sea and our blood, the main buffer is bicarb/carbonate. The carbonate is what takes up the acid. And though pH doesn’t change much, movement within the range really matters.
Our blood sits at about pH 7.3. If it drops to, say, 7.2, you have a condition called acidosis. Pretty bad. If it drops to “neutral”, you are dead. The reason is that CO2 has to be transported from the cells and released in the lungs. It reacts reversibly with carbonate in the blood. At pH 7.3 that is a minor component, and at pH 7, there is half as much. The transport dosn’t work. CO2 is stuck at cell level.
The sea has the same buffer, and a drop of 0.1 in pH also means a 25% drop in carbonate. But lots of organsims need that carbonate for making shells and other structures.
The chief buffer in concentration and control is bicarbonate. It reacts with both acids and bases to level the pH, à al Le Chatelier.
The boric acid system acts as a secondary buffer.
A buffer has an acid and a complementary base. For bicarb/carb, biacrb is the acid, and carbonate the base. carbonate reacts with acids.
Bicarbonate can’t usefully act as a base to CO2. What would be the product?
The buffer is
CO₃⁻²+H⁺ ⇌ HCO₃⁻ pKa=9.13
The pH is on the acidic side of bicarbonate. You’re on the wrong side.
No, the reaction between HCO₃⁻ and CO₂ is
HCO₃⁻+H⁺ ⇌ CO₂ + H₂O pKa=5.94
pH 8 is way on the alkali side of that. It’s on the acid side of pKa 9.13, but much closer.
You have all the right data, but you don’t understand how the chemistry works.
The perturbation is on the acidic side of “normal” pH not on the higher side. The dominant species buffering the system is bicarbonate. It buffers the solution by reacting with hydronium ion.
“The dominant species buffering the system is bicarbonate. It buffers the solution by reacting with hydronium ion.”
You don’t seem to understand how buffers work. There has to be an acid and a base component. Bicarb alone cannot buffer CO₂. I asked above what that acid-base reaction would be. It is:
HCO₃⁻ + CO₂ ⇌ CO₂ + HCO₃⁻
Sure, CO₃⁻⁻ is in lower concentration. But it is the only species thta can remove CO₂
It reacts to make carbonic acid.
And then what?
Nick is saying that the human body NEEDS CO2.. Just like the planet does. 🙂
A compendium of all sea surface pH measurements from 1920-2012, shows, if anything, a slight INCREASE in ocean pH !
Notice the huge amount of variability. so a change of 0.1 pH measured at one site, is a total nothing burger
Yes.
As a chemist I see that he uses the right words, but he doesn’t understand the chemistry.
CO2 is a waste product of our respiration, metabolism. It plays a fundamental role in our biochemistry, but we don’t need to take it in or to consume it as plants do.
“we don’t need to take it in or to consume it as plants do”
No, we need to get rid of it. Also vital. And that is where availability of carbonate in the blood matters. That is determined by the equilibria I have described. pH is just an indicator of that. pH 7 has no significance at all. It certainly won’t keep you alive.
You use red herrings often in your arguments. Why is that?
I would have thought that everyone here knows that we need to get rid of CO2.
So should I stop drinking beer, Nick?
My CO2 ingestion must go up by about 50% at about 5pm every day.
More on +25C-degree days.
Yes
Spoil sport.
No, CO2 is absolutely essential for the human metabolism. 🙂
Does need to be in the lungs though.
A load of garbage. See below.
Nope. Your conclusion is off.
Nick,
You did a fine article on Feedback a number of years ago.
Why don’t you go back to doing good work again?
First, comparing ocean pH and blood pH is ludicrous. You’re comparing an external ocean environment to highly sensitive internal metabolism.
Second, ocean pH varies annually by as much as 0.6 at many sites with no effect on marine organisms. They are adapted to those seasonal fluctuations. A modest pH change of 0.07 over…checking bogus Dana Nutella plot…40 years is minuscule compared to annual pH fluctuations.
Third, there is no such thing as “Global Average Surface Sea Water pH.” The number of stations measuring the pH of the vast oceans is sparse and only a handful have a continuous record lasting more than a few years. It’s statistical voodoo.
See for yourself:
https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/Buoys+and+Autonomous+Systems
Click on one of the 4 links at the bottom, Coastal Moorings, Open Ocean Moorings, Coral Reef Moorings, and Autonomous Surface Vehicles. Try this one at La Push which has one of the longest (15 years) and most complete records:
https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/La%2BPush
False analogy. The pH of the oceans has NOTHING to do with blood chemistry.
The pH of the Baltic Sea varies from 8.3 down to 7.7 depending of the season and location. According to you, this should result in ecological catastrophe. It doesn’t.
The whole (originally AR4) ‘ocean acidification’ scare has been a scientific fraud from the beginning.
AR4 ocean pH chemistry calculations overlooked that oceans are also highly buffered. Adding that known fact in, their future estimates of ~minus 1.2 pH goes to minus 0.12. That is a big basic chemistry error.
As has been posted here many times, calcifying organisms (corals, clams, snails, oysters) have biological mechanisms to modify the immediate pH of water they are calcifying—something evolution necessarily provided for eons ago. For example, the pH of seawater in Florida Bay varies from about 4.8 in its winter mangrove fringe to about 9.5 in Key West late summer. No organism in Florida Bay cares a bit. They evolved to adapt.
The ‘disastrous’ ocean acidification peer reviewed literature examples are also good examples of scientific misconduct. I specifically revealed 2 in essay ‘Shell Games’ in ebook Blowing Smoke—Milne Bay corals and Whisky Bay oyster hatchery. Not to mention the fraudulent ‘crazy tropical fish’ examples of this post.
“Adding that known fact in, their future estimates of ~minus 1.2 pH goes to minus 0.12. That is a big basic chemistry error.”
No, the error is yours. The pH mentioned is observed pH – after buffering.
Nick, you can do better. Really, much better—if you are countering me with ‘facts’.
The OBSERVED ocean pH difference past 40+ years is from about 8.15 to 8.1 over the entire period of observation. That observation is from station Aloha north of Hawaii, deliberately chosen in a ‘barren’ ocean region avoiding as much as possible the confounding pH biological effects. Facts easily googled.
The whole ocean is MASSIVELY BUFFERED by millions and millions of years of bicarbonate shells, basalt, limestone etc etc.
See my other posts for a run-down on the Aloha measurements.
Changing the subject rather. You were talking about their future estimates, although I could not find such a large change in the AR4.
But whatever, pH is pH. There is no basis for dividing by 10. In fact, there is never a physical basis for dividing a logarithm by such a number.
Decibels
More garbage..
“It looks like the ocean pH is dropping like a stone! Do you notice anything odd? The entire vertical scale of the chart goes from pH of 8.03 to 8.11 — less than 0.1 of a pH unit.”
Yes the vertical scale represents an increase in Hydrogen ion concentration of 20%. It appears that the author doesn’t understand the pH scale!
At around pH 8, hydrogen ion concentration is basically negligible, kind of like one’s bank account decreased in value by 20%, from 10 to 8 cents.
I like my club soda to be one million percent more acidic.
The buffer that matters here is
CO₃⁻²+H⁺ ⇌ HCO₃⁻K2: pKa=9.13
That means [CO₃⁻²][H⁺]=10^-9.13*[HCO₃⁻]
[HCO₃⁻] is about 0.002M and doesn’t change much
So
[CO₃⁻²]=10^-11.7/[H⁺]
A small change in [H⁺] means a big change in carbonate. And that matters.
No matter the topic, you have trouble differentiating cause and effect.
He has a modest education in math, but wants us to believe he is an expert in every field of science and engineering.
You seem to have trouble with mass action relations. They don’t have cause and effect. They are constraints, and have to be observed, whatever cause you impose on the system.
The cause is the perturbation. The effect is the resultant concentrations.
There is so much carbonate available in ocean water that any imaginary minor change is absolutely meaningless.
Ocean pH fluctuates far more that 0.1, even on a daily basis, and certainly fluctuates far more on a longer period. (see Flinder’s reef graph elsewhere).
And the world’s oceans still thrive with carbonate-based shelled sea life.
The pH has dropped by 0.11. That inplies loss of 29% of dissolved carbonate.
Since ocean pH varies so much across time and space, a change of 0.11 units is meaningless, even if it could be measured.
You seem to have moved on from hydrogen ion concentration being a problem. At least you now admit that buffering will occur. What makes you think a supposed change of 29% in carbonate concentration is important?
Yes, that is another example of him using a red herring.
I agree that carbonate will decrease, probably not as much as he says, but you and Russ are correct that the change is negligible in terms of order of magnitude changes experienced by calcifiers on even hourly bases.
1.. It is part of a cyclic oscillation of a far greater amplitude. (see graph below.. pH is actually on the high side of normal)
2.. requires another 2000% change of H+ ions to become neutral
3.. There is a huge abundance of carbonates in the ocean… so NO, it is NOT a loss of dissolved carbonate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonic_acid#/media/File:Carbonate_system_of_seawater.svg
Nuttycello never understood much of anything !!
Would require something like a 2000% further increase in H+ ions to get to pH7
*sigh* OK, I’ll say it because someone has to: The ocean is not acidic, and it is not on its way to becoming acidic by any chemical path we can identify or measure. The ocean is alkaline. A decrease in alkalinity does not mean the ocean is “acidified,” or “becoming acidic.” It means the “alkalinity has varied.”
It’s been said here a million times before.
Sadly it fails the Goebbels method meaning we will need to repeat it another billion times.
The term ‘acidification’ in chemistry refers to adding acid, it does not mean the resultant pH will be below 7.
No, it means “rendering a solution acidic”, which is never going to occur with the oceans.
A solution whose pH has dropped but is still alkaline has NOT been acidified.
“A solution whose pH has dropped but is still alkaline has NOT been acidified.”
Actually it has, in chemistry ‘Acidification refers to the process of lowering the pH of aqueous samples’, in a lab manual you might tell the students to acidify a solution by adding a certain amount of acid, it does not imply that the resultant pH will be below 7.
NuttyCello based his graph on the Aloha short term measurements.
Problem is that when you look at Flinders Reef proxy data we see much larger pseudo-cyclic swings that appear linked to the PDO..
Here is the Aloha data on a more sensible scale, with pH7 (neutral) as the axis zero.
Yes. From here on, ocean pH can only ever go up. Never down.
And here is the Aloha data against the Flinder’s Reef data…
Ocean pH measured at Aloha, is actually very much on the high side.
It is impossible to reduce the alkalinity of the sea by adding an acid.
For soil. And we are talking about the WATER in the soil.
(The sulphur is converted to sulphuric acid)
At least 3 people cannot understand a simple graph showing how buffering works.
Rivers and estuaries can be down to pH as low as 6.5.. certainly often close to or below neutral
Oysters are grown in estuaries.
All those large numbers of low pH rivers feeding the oceans over millions and millions of years..
Yet the oceans remain stubbornly around pH 8 +/- a bit.
The mere existence of freshwater bivalves happily living in water at pH6.5 puts the lie to the entire OA fraud.
NASA and word games.
When I was in school, we just referred to it as the pH of the solution. You measured the pH to determine if the solution was acidic or basic (alternate for alkaline).
We did not measure the acidity. We measured the pH.
Language is fluid, I get that.
But he who controls the language controls the ideas.
Of that we must stand in constant vigil.
The reefs are doomed in most publications except in the brochures for scuba diving holidays.
And there you have it. Everyone that publicly has an opinion also has an agenda.
Sulfurous fuel causes sulfur dioxide so2 emissions which acidify the earth.
Hydrodesulfurization removes the sulfur in the fuel, the sulfur emissions disappear and the problem is solved.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/364672873_Energy_Basics_of_Catalytic_Hydrodesulfurization_of_Diesel_Fuels
You might have mentioned that this desulfurization is needed in order to protect the vehicular catalysts used for emissions reduction.
Interestingly, sulfur in jet fuel is reduced by these processes, almost inadvertently, even though there is no benefit from a fuel performance standpoint.
Like it is stated: the pH is above 8 so one whole unit more basic than neutral pH 7. The ocean is slightly basic, not acidic at all. On top, we have a buffered system (mainly with bicarbonate) which isn’t going to move that much anytime soon. Alarmist nonsense, nothing more.
Acidification was a major problem in Europe in the 1980s. Acid rain killed trees and acidified lakes. The acid rain came from industries that emitted large amounts of sulfur dioxide.
The industries in Europe that emitted sulfur dioxide were closed and the acid rain stopped. The forests and lakes recovered and the acidification problems were solved.
https://germanhistory-intersections.org/en/knowledge-and-education/ghis:document-130.pdf
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58874831
Sulfur dioxide and copper ions are poisons for nature.
Carbon dioxide is nutrition for nature.
There is a difference between poisons and nutrition.
“copper ions are poisons for nature.”
Too much is. Not enough is also.
https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Copper-HealthProfessional/
From the article: “The bottom line is that there is plenty of evidence that coral reefs worldwide are thriving (not every one, and not every year, but on an aggregate basis), and no evidence at all of aggregate decline. In light of that evidence, what is the proof that “acidification” is harming corals? The answer is, zero.”
Zero *is* the answer.
Climate Alarmists have been pushing this lie for decades, and have never had any evidence to back up their claims. All they have is speculation, assumptions and unsubstantiated assertions. That’s all.
That doesn’t stop them from repeating the lie, though.
Not to mentioned cherry picking, color altered charts, and photoshopped images.
In “Fundamentals of Ocean pH”, September 18, 2015, R. Cohen and W. Happer, using “a quantitative review of physical chemistry”, show that the ocean can never go acid from atmospheric CO2, as shown in their chart. Notations on the chart added in Real Climate Science shows Human CO2 Cannot Cause a Climate Crisis! John E. Greer, Jr.
Whether it “goes acid” is irrelevant. H⁺ is present in tiny amounts and is not a reagent, though it may be an intermediate. What counts is the reduction in carbonate, which is substantial.
Utter nonsense. There is an unlimited supply of carbonate in the ocean. the more H+ produced the more carbonate dissolves into the water from solids. pH remains the same.
Solid Calcium Carbonate in the Ocean:
Sediments: Estimates suggest marine sediments hold roughly \(1.5 \times 10^{15}\) tonnes (1,500 gigatons) of solid calcium carbonate.Annual Turnover: Marine calcifiers (corals, mollusks, plankton) produce about 0.6 to 1.1 gigatons of solid \(CaCO_{3}\) each year.Dissolution: Roughly 60–80% of this biologically produced solid \(CaCO_{3}\) dissolves back into the water column before it ever reaches the deep seafloor. [1, 2, 3, 4]
Well said. Anyone who has visited the Kent Coast will have seen the White Cliffs, composed entirely of pure calcium carbonate. Any increase in atmospheric CO2 will cause a small amount of this calcium carbonate to dissolve.The reverse process causes limestone to be deposited as stalagmites and stalagtites in caves.
IIRC some sea creature actually secrete lower pH substances to collect carbonate for their shells..
And don’t forget the basalt and limestone, both carbonate rocks, that make up a lot of the ocean boundaries, constantly being eroded.
The pH scale is log so every whole number is a power/factor of ten.
By definition pH is the negative exponent of the hydrogen ion concentration.
For instance, pH 9 is 10^-9 or 1 part per billion, 0.000000001.
pH 8 is 10^-8 or 10 parts per billion, 0.000000010.
To go from pH 9 to pH 8 is factor of 10 or 1,000%!!!! Makes 26% look trivial.
Ocean “acidification” of pH 8.2 to pH 8.1 is a decrease in alkalinity equal to 1 ppb of H ions.
I’m fairly certain the ocean flora and fauna don’t even notice.
The plot of Global Average Surface Sea Water pH is fictitious. There is no such thing. It’s derived by the standard statistical voodoo that climate alarmists use to promote their narrative and would make a legitimate statistician burn with shame.
In reality, there are only a handful of sites globally that have measured pH directly for anything beyond a few years. All of the ones that have anything close to a continuous record show far larger variations in pH annually, up to 0.6, than the pH trend projections for the year 2100. Those projections, incidentally, come from computer models that use the ridiculous and recently rejected RCP8.5 assumptions.
You can see those sites here:
https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/Buoys+and+Autonomous+Systems
Click on one of the links at the bottom, Coastal Moorings, Open Ocean Moorings, Coral Reef Moorings, and Autonomous Surface Vehicles. Check this one at La Push which has one of the longest (15 years) and most complete records:
https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/La%2BPush
Once you see how few monitoring stations there are and consider that the oceans cover two-thirds of the planet surface and that there are thousands of meteorological sites on land measuring temperature compared to the few dozen monitoring ocean pH and carbon dioxide concentration, you realize how ridiculous it is to claim a “global” average surface sea water pH measurement and trend.
And there is no associated uncertainty (margin of error) shown. We are to assume that the measurements are exact, or of such precision that they can’t be shown. That is highly unlikely! Or, that the author is embarrassed to show even the 1-sigma uncertainty. There are surface-water diurnal variations, mostly arising from evaporation, that are at least an order of magnitude larger than the range.
Climate alarmists NEVER put error bars on their measurements. If they did, the insignificance of the changes would be apparent.
No less than the famous Stanford University geology professor, Konrad Krauskopf, arguably the father of modern geochemistry, stated in his textbook that because of (bi)carbonate/borate buffering in sea water, it was unlikely that seawater could ever reach even neutrality (pH 7) through carbonation, except in some deep, stagnant pools enriched in hydrogen sulfide.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Bates_Krauskopf
“Acidification” implies a process of becoming acidic, as in the titration of an alkaline or basic solution with a strong acid. However, it seems to me to be a misnomer if seawater is not expected to ever become acidic. It is a bit like a divinity major bragging about becoming a climatologist someday while the height of his achievement was to become a rich politician.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/09/15/are-the-oceans-becoming-more-acidic/
Alkalinity varies. An extreme example is at the mouth of the Amazon, where the impact of the fresh water (pH ~6.0-7.2) can stretch hundreds of miles into the Atlantic.
Must be the same for any larger river. Does marine life get wiped out at the river mouth every time the river is in flood?
This is the sort of thing that marine biologists should be studying at a local level. If corals are impacted by drops in ocean alkalinity, then one would expect changes in the corals near river mouths.
It rains acid also.